Beijing Temples/Palaces (30APR-3MAY)

Veiw of the Forbidden City from north, Tienanman Square is on the horizon beyond the City.


Palace of Governance in the Forbidden City


Group photo in Tienanmen Square with locals slipping in. In front of us was our lone guide with all our cameras surrounded by a hoard of May Day visitors to the Square taking pictures of the Westerners.

Emperor's Prayer Hall at the Temple of Heaven.

Summer Palace

On my second day in Beijing, I was ready to get back into the culture and history with a trip to the Summer Palace. The palace is a large and beautiful complex of temples and palaces built around a large lake. It was renovated/refurbished by Empress Cixi with funds meant for the Navy... one of the risks of putting national defense funds in the hands of an Empress I suppose.... at least it is built around a body of water, which is kind of associated with the Navy. Anyway, Empress Cixi actually has an impressive history of rule from 'behind the curtain' at the end of China's imperial period. She began as a concubine, but provided the Emperor with his only male heir. She then went on to rule, through control of her son, followed by her nephew, until her death in 1908. During her time of influence, she gained the nickname Dragon Lady, for her charm I'm sure, which has stuck until present day. But I digress.

Back at the Summer Palace, the grounds were quite impressive and a section of it now serves as a bit of a museum for Cixi with pictures of her around the Palace grounds, the opera house that she had built for her, her car (a first in China) and many other items of memorabilia.

After returning to the hostel that evening, I met a German couple and a guy from Australia, who I joined for a trip down Wangfujing Street, a famous snack food street lined with food stalls, where you can eat a little of nearly anything. We tried fried silk worms, which tasted like pumpkin seeds, but had a mushy middle; snake, which I really thought was squid; sheep testicle, which surprisingly tasted like chicken, but also with a mushy middle; and some normal snacks like fried dough covered in sesame seeds; chicken, which thankfully tasted like chicken; and sweet tea (with dry ice in it, so it would fit in with the crazy stuff.) The Australian also tried cat, which smelled like a litter box, but looked like beef; and a sea urchin, which almost made him vomit. In addition, there were scorpions and an assortment of other strange insect and meat kabobs.

The vendors were great entertainment, as they tried to sell us everything they had to offer. If you were to believe them, everything was an aphrodisiac to improve male stamina. Possibly more amusing, was watching the reactions of both the people eating the 'delicacies' as well as the audience of curious passer-by's that gathered to watch the more courageous, or theatrical, diners trying the stranger items on the menu.

The next morning, I awoke without being sick, which I suppose is a bonus, and headed for the Temple of Heaven. I expected it to be a quiet place of reflection, but instead found the surrounding gardens were more like a public park with crowds of locals playing cards, doing Tai Chi, watching local musicians jam, and enjoying all the other festivities one might expect to find on a sunny day in the park. It was also the May Day holiday weekend, so the place was packed with Chinese tourist from around the country, who overwhelmingly out numbered western tourists.

The temple was interesting, but several areas were closed, possibly due to the large holiday crowds. The buildings and grounds were impressive in the first place, but the fact that the emperors only used the temple once a year to conduct large ceremonial animal sacrifices and prayer for good harvests made its grand scale even more remarkable. The grounds cover nearly three square kilometers. Plus, the emperors prayer hall is a three tiered round temple made entirely of wood (no nails!) that stands over 100 feet tall and sits on three more round platforms of marble... and the emperor only prayed here once a year! I had mentioned some of the unfortunate losses of historic Beijing, due to the Olympic preparations, in my last post. However, one of the good things brought about by the games was the restoration work on tourist sites, like the great wall and temples like the Temple of Heaven, which reportedly had a five million dollar facelift before the games and renovation work was still ongoing.

In the evening, I met my new tour group and leader and continued the adventures in dining from the day before. This time the delicacies were frog, which tastes like fishy chicken, but was chopped up with bones and all, which made it too much work to pick the meat from the scrap to make it worth eating; and duck stomach, which was like really chewy beef. Again, I made it through the night without getting sick, so I count it as a success.

On day two of the May Day holiday, we headed for Tiananmen Square. The fair-haired girls in the group quickly became the tourist attraction, to all the Chinese tourist in the square. Then, when we all gathered for a group photo in front of the Forbidden City, a huge crowd of local tourists gathered in front of us, to take pictures of the white people, as well as slipping in amongst the group to be in the picture.

About a month after our visit, the world observed the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre (or The June Fourth Incident/Movement as it is called in China). It was interesting to see some of the few images of the aftermath and recognize the buildings in the background around the square, which were all built in 1959 to mark the 10th anniversary of 'new' China and have not changed since that deadly day in June 1989. In China the anniversary was not recognized, nor was it discussed during my tour of the square. An estimated 400-800 people were killed, many more were arrested, and immediately after the event, foreign journalists were restricted to their rooms and banned from the country all together.

We continued our tour from Tiananmen Square into the Forbidden City past the ever following eyes of Mao, whose photo stands tall on the outer wall of the city over watching the square. The Forbidden City is an impressive work of extravagance built on the backs of a people forbidden from the grounds for five centuries, until the fall of the empire in the early 1900s. The day I visited, due to the May Day holiday, it felt like half the country was trying to get a peak inside the walls. During the visit, I also learned even Starbucks had gotten a hold of some forbidden real estate until they were kicked out in favor of a local coffee house chain. The central spine of the Forbidden City had a similar lay out to most palaces I had visited in Asia, with 'business' palaces up front for the Emperors meetings with government and military officials, followed by the Emperors 'office palace' and then the 'living quarters' palaces for Emperor and Empress, and finally the gardens at the very back. However, the city also had a large west wing for up to 3000 concubines and an eastern wing for the emperor’s children and family. The concubine section included more of Empress Cixi's memorabilia recording her rise from the bottom rungs of concubine city to the top of Empire.

The last temple/palace I visited while in Beijing, was the Yonghegong Lama Temple a Buddhist Monastery of Tibetan Buddhism, which served as a palace for Prince Yong Yin Zhenin the 1700s before being converted into a monastery. Today, it remains a significant monastery and houses the largest Buddha carved from a single piece of wood, which stands nearly over 75 feet tall. The grounds were not as grand as the other palaces and temples, but they were very busy with Buddhist patrons coming for prayer and a few monks as well. The air was thick with the smoke of incense sticks carrying the prayers of the faithful to the heavens. The sticks were planted, like the needles of a porcupine’s back, in large pots outside each temple. Inside the temples were various statues of gods and Buddhas, which represent or are dedicated to different Buddhas of past, present, future, healing, good fortune, wisdom etc. Unlike the other temples and palaces across Beijing that were loud and busy with tourists, this temple was tranquil and truly felt like a place of reflection and worship.